Consultancy and Training

Diverse Cymru is a specialist provider of equality and diversity consultancy and training courses

Diverse Cymru consults with people in their workplaces, schools, universities and communities to improve diversity practice, increase knowledge and awareness of equality, mental health and wellbeing and stress management.

Equality & Diversity Consultancy

Involvement & Engagement Events: We can assist you to hold inclusive and accessible events for service users, stakeholders and staff to share equality issues and concerns and solutions; particularly in regard to developing your equality objectives. Diverse Cymru can provide a facilitator, help design relevant and open questions, recruit participants from our extensive network of contacts from across the protected characteristics or from specific groups, and provide feedback.

Equality Audits: Our consultants can review and advise on your Strategic Equality Plan, policies and procedures and assist you to develop an action plan to identify and implement the priorities.

Mental Health Audit and Policy: We can assist you to hold inclusive and accessible events for service users, carers and staff to determine levels of satisfaction, issues/ barriers and solutions; and we can assist you to develop a Mental Health and Well-being policy.

Equality Impact Assessment: Members of our EIA group carry out independent reviews on your impact assessments for new or existing strategies, programmes, plans and policies to determine whether they create potentially adverse impact upon protected characteristic groups.

Critical Friends: We can assist you to develop your own critical friends or advisory group to provide feedback on your services.

Learning and Development

Equality & Diversity Awareness: Examine the role of diversity within your organisation and society and the advantages of improving your diversity practice.

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Learning outcomes By the end of the session participants will be able to:

Understand what equality and diversity mean in practice

Understand how diversity operates in organisations and its importance to organisational strategy

Understand what their responsibilities are and how they can contribute to improved equality and diversity practice in their workplace

Cultural Diversity Awareness: Understand factors that shape culture, cultural differences in communication, family and gender and increase your confidence in day-to-day interactions with people from various backgrounds.

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Learning outcomes By the end of the session participants will:

Understand factors that shape culture

Consider examples of cultural differences, such as, communication, family and gender

Equality and Diversity Champions Programme: Facilitation and coaching support for a group of staff members to improve diversity practice in your organisation by enabling the group to take action on diversity.

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Learning outcomes The programme will enable participants to:

Gain an awareness of how equality and diversity operates in their organisation

Identify what an Equality and Diversity Champion/ Change Agent can do, individually and collectively, to improve equality and diversity practice in the organisation

Increase listening and questioning skills, develop confidence in how to challenge and provide constructive feedback, develop an awareness of groups dynamics, organisational and self awareness

Improve influencing and communication skills

Develop an improved sense of team identity as an Equality and Diversity Champion and appreciate the value of the work of an Equality Champion/change agent

Getting People Talking: Know how to create the conditions that will enable people to contribute to meetings, events or discussion groups and enable them to find the experience rewarding.

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Learning outcomes By the end of the session participants will be able to:

Recognise the importance of encouraging participation in every step of running an event or meeting. This covers preparation and planning, choosing an appropriate venue, sending out invitations and publicising the event, running the meeting and the evaluation afterwards

Identify good practice in all aspects of running a meeting or event including room layout, materials used, methods used (for example PowerPoint, working in small groups or open forums)

Address the needs of different groups, for example Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) people, older people or disabled people, in order to make the meeting or event truly inclusive.

Recognise the importance of the messages you send as leader of the meeting through the methods you use, what you do and say and through your body language and tone of voice

Learn about group dynamics and how to deal with different situations, such as quieter people or someone dominating the group

Understanding The Equality Act: Understand who is covered (protected characteristic groups) and ensure compliance with regard to employment and customer service.

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Learning objectives By the end the session participants will have increased understanding of:

Who is covered by the Act (protected characteristics)

What types of discrimination are unlawful

When positive action measures can be adopted

When is discrimination allowed (including occupational requirements)

What are an employers’ or service providers’ responsibilities and liabilities

The course is particularly relevant for individuals involved in recruiting or managing staff and those responsible for providing services, as well as for trade union representatives. Download a factsheet about this course

Making Reasonable Adjustments for Disabled People in Employment: know when you need to change the way things are done, when to make changes to overcome barriers created by physical features of your organisation and when to provide extra equipment or provide assistance.

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Learning outcomes By the end of the session participants will have:

Increased awareness of the legal duty on employers to make reasonable adjustments for disabled workers

Gained an understanding of the underpinning principles of the duty to make reasonable adjustments

Improved their understanding of the disadvantages and barriers faced by disabled staff (from all 5 impairment groups) and the potential solutions to overcome these

Identified who has a right to reasonable adjustments, when these are required and who has the responsibility for this

Have an understanding of what steps to take if an employer doesn’t know that the person is disabled and/or if the disabled person has not informed the employer of their impairment and its nature.

Increased understanding of the range of adjustments that can be made

Considered the consequences of failure to make reasonable adjustments at work

Managing Stress in the Workplace: Designed for managers and supervisors to understand how stress can impact on physical and mental health and what can trigger stress, to identify signs and symptoms and how to better manage staff who experience stress.

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Learning outcomes By the end the session participants will have better understanding of:

These courses can be provided for groups of up to 16 people at a cost of £430 for a half day or £650 for a full day, plus travel expenses.

Mental Health First Aid: is a Welsh Government approved which improves mental health literacy; recognise the signs and symptoms of mental health problems and be able to respond to mental health crises, support and signpost.

This is a 2 day course for a maximum of 14 participants and costs £1,200 plus travel expenses.

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Mental Health First Aid aims to help participants:

To preserve life

To provide help to prevent the mental health problem or crisis developing into a more serious state

Our Trainers

Bethan Roberts

Bethan Roberts is an associate trainer and consultant for Diverse Cymru. She worked for over 15 years in statutory equality commissions and dealt with cases of disability, sex and race discrimination in employment and service provision and is currently an Employment Tribunal Member. Bethan has developed and delivered a training programme for the NHS Wales Shared Services Partnerships on Stress Awareness at Work and Managing Stress in the Workplace. Bethan has been an accredited Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) Instructor since 2008 and an Associate Teacher at Bangor University’s Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice (CMRP) since 2010. She has delivered more than 100 MHFA courses to a wide variety of organisations and also tutors on mental health for Cardiff University’s PGCE and Social Work MA courses. Her qualifications include a degree in Economics, an MSc in Health Economics, an MA in Women’s Studies and an MSc in Equality and Diversity. Bethan delivers the following courses:

Colin Heyman

Colin Heyman is an associate trainer and consultant for Diverse Cymru. He has been working as a trainer, consultant and coach in the field of equality and diversity and experience of developing leaders through coaching and running leadership programmes for over 20 years. He has experience of working with a variety of organisations, including a number of third sector organisations, large public sector organisations, small companies and several housing associations. His qualifications include a MSc. in Change, Certificates in Group-work and Human Resource Management, and a Diploma in Leadership, Mentoring and Coaching. Colin delivers the following courses and programmes:

Samira Salter

Samira Salter is the Senior Support Worker for Diverse Cymru’s BME Mental Health projects. She has over 30 years of experience in engaging with culturally diverse communities, raising awareness of the barriers BME people face when accessing support and services from public and third sector organisations. She offers practical guidance and advice to organisations such as South Wales Police and Sport Wales in engaging with BME communities and has been working with Welsh Gymnastics to give BME girls the opportunity to take up the sport. Samira is a bilingual English/Arabic speaker and was a finalist for the 2015 Welsh Asian Women Achievement Awards (WAWAA) for Self-Development. She has a BA (hons) in Youth and Community Education and has worked extensively in the fields of mental health and health and social care. Samira delivers the following course:

Bespoke consultancy packages and training courses (including lectures and seminars) can be designed for your organisation with only a small surcharge to cover the research and development of new content and materials. For further information or to book a course or discuss a consultancy package, contact us: consultancy@diverse.cymru 029 2036 8888